While it is not known if Layne tried to kick drugs during his later years, that didn’t stop others from trying to help him. Mark Lanegan went to Layne’s apartment to try and talk to him. Krist Novoselic would go over and leave food for him.32
Nancy Layne McCallum contacted drug counselor Bob Forrest and asked if he and Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante—both recovering heroin addicts—would be willing to talk to Layne, a request they agreed to.
“Layne’s got an odd sense of humor,” McCallum told Forrest. “I told him John [Frusciante] had gangrene once. He said, ‘In his arm? That’s terrible, Mom. John’s a guitar player. He needs his hands and arms. Me? I’m just a singer. I can get by without them.’ I know he was joking, but I don’t like to hear stuff like that. Can you try to talk some sense into him?”
Forrest and Frusciante met with Layne at his condo. According to Forrest, “His mind worked but he was a million miles away.” He was playing a video game the entire time they were talking.
“Hey, Layne. What’s going on?” Forrest asked.
“Nothing. I know why you’re here,” Layne said.
“Your mom’s worried, man. You don’t look too good.” Of Layne’s appearance, Forrest wrote in his memoir, “His skin took on the look of bleached vellum, his weight dropped below ninety pounds … He had entered the end stage of the game.”
“I’m okay, though. Really,” Layne insisted as he pretended to listen. The two of them eventually left.
“I don’t think he’ll come out of this,” Forrest told Frusciante.
“It’s his life, man,” Frusciante replied.33
PART V
2001–2002
Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths.
Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths.
Heavy misfortunes have befallen us; but let us only cling closer to what remains, and transfer our love for those whom we have lost to those who yet live. Our circle will be small, but bound close by the ties of affection and mutual misfortune. And when time shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of care will be born to replace those of whom we have been so cruelly deprived.
Chapter 25
Not like this—don’t leave like this.
IN APRIL 2000, Argentinean journalist Adriana Rubio traveled to Seattle determined to track down Layne to write a book about him. This initial trip was unsuccessful, but she made a second trip in September of that year and made contact with Layne’s mother and sister Liz Coats.1 Layne was not happy about the book, or the fact that his mother and sister were cooperating with her. When Coats told Layne about it, he told her he wanted no part in it. Rubio returned in June 2001, when she met with Coats and Nancy Layne McCallum for several days’ worth of interviews in Seattle and Haines, Alaska, where McCallum was living at the time.2
Layne sightings were rare in his final years. According to Seattle music journalist Charles R. Cross, Layne, toward the end of his life, had lost most of his teeth, and his arms were covered with abscesses.3 He was also dangerously underweight. Although he was naturally skinny, people who knew Layne said that his normal weight ranged between 150 and 170 pounds. Those who saw him in his later years estimated his weight at 100 pounds or less.
It can be surmised that there were four things that formed his daily routine: his toys and video games; his cat, Sadie; his art projects; and his drugs. Less than a ten-minute walk from Layne’s apartment is a PETCO and an art supplies store. Both businesses were open during the time Layne lived in the neighborhood, and it is possible he frequented these stores. However, none of the employees at the PETCO were working there during the period Layne lived in the area; the employees at the art store say the business changed ownership in early 2002, and they don’t recall seeing him in the store. They also said there was another art store nearby at the time that has since gone out of business.
As you walk down nearby University Avenue, teeming with bars, restaurants, and shops, as well as University of Washington students, there are many businesses that might have had items of interest to Layne. Store employees said because of the constant turnover in students, employees, and businesses opening and closing, it would be unlikely to find stores frequented by Layne or people who might have seen him.
Morgen Gallagher ran into Layne at a Super Bowl party in January 2001. Layne told Gallagher he was going to clean up and go to rehab so he could audition for the newly vacant lead singer position in Rage Against the Machine. Based on accounts of Layne’s final studio sessions in 1998, it is unlikely this was anything more than his talking or thinking out loud.
In early 2001, Nick Pollock was buying groceries at a QFC supermarket in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. He saw someone wearing what he described as a “ridiculous costume,” consisting of a funky hat, a fake wig, and a long coat, shuffling like an old man. It was Layne. Pollock approached him, not sure what to expect because on previous occasions Layne had not recognized him. This time, Layne recognized him immediately.
“Nick!” he said, giving him a big hug.
Pollock was alarmed. “It was so disturbing to me that I had a hard time just putting sentences together,” he recalled. “He looked like a dead man walking. He had no teeth that I could remember. His skin was gray. He looked like an eighty-year-old man. He really looked like a skeleton with skin hanging off of it. If he weighed a hundred pounds, I wouldn’t have been surprised.”
The two spoke for about ten minutes, Pollock said, small talk that he tried to keep going. He didn’t ask about Alice in Chains. “I knew that I wasn’t going to ask him anything about girlfriends—not at all applicable—what he’s been doing, where he’s been … It wasn’t the Layne I knew. I mean really: it was like the ghost of him was in his body.”
Layne and Pollock made noncommittal plans to get together. Pollock was so shaken, he almost walked out of the store with his cart without paying for his groceries. He went home and broke down in tears.
Jeff Gilbert was walking down University Avenue looking for a place to eat and shopping for records in late 2001 or early 2002. Layne recognized him on the street, approached him, and said, “Hey, Jeff, what’s up, man?” Gilbert remembers it was cold, and Layne was wearing a long jacket, knit cap, scarf, and gloves. “His pants were too big on him,” Gilbert recalled. “He looked like an eighty-year-old version of himself, and it was frightening.”
They spoke for about ten minutes, and he said Layne was lucid. “He still managed to smile. Every so often, you’d see that little glimmer.